- Welcome back to the final installment
of our Get Fit In 4 Weeks.
By now, you should be feeling a little fitter,
faster, and more in control of your cycling.
- Although I can imagine
that you might be feeling a little bit tired as well.
- Yes, and that's what this week is all about,
freshening up a little, and then testing your improvements
with a fitness test, or a big event maybe.
("Marches" by Tigerblood Jewel)
You've overloaded your system now for three weeks.
And now is the time to reward yourself
by reducing the volume, the frequency,
and intensity of some of your sessions.
A little freshness will start to return to your legs.
- Yeah, and this is actually then that fitness
that you've worked so hard for coming through
because your body is now adapting to the stress
that you've been placing it under.
- Now, I said earlier in this series
that rest is best.
But to simply take the entire week off
is not gonna deliver you the best results
on your event or test day.
- No, you still need to stimulate your body
with some short, sharp sessions just to help sharpen up,
ready for that test at the end of the week.
- This period is also known as a taper.
And to find what works best for you
can take a little bit of practice.
("Straight Out The Basement 3" by Axel Ljung)
I've referred to testing a few times
around this series.
And whilst you may have only been training
to improve your on-the-bike fitness,
why not go out and test, and see how much
you have really progressed?
- Yeah, now the preparation for this kind of begins
two days before by taking your final rest day.
Now that kind of takes care of itself,
provided you don't spend your entire rest day eating cake.
(chuckles)
- Well, that's now out of the way, onto the pretest ride.
Your pretest ride, or what I used to do
the day before a race.
This one is all about waking up your body,
getting rid of those tired legs and activating
everything before the test tomorrow.
- Yeah, it needs to be just hard enough
that you activate those energy systems,
and stimulate your muscles,
and get your body prepared for what's to come.
- I would recommend a really good, progressive
20 minute ramping up, in your warm up,
before completing two times six minutes of
uncomfortable, but not maximal efforts.
- Now, so if you've got a power meter,
then you want to be looking at about 95% of your FTP.
And then, in between those two sets of six minutes,
you wanna be spinning very gently for about 10 minutes.
- Yes, if this isn't enough,
which it could well be, but depending on what your weeks
have been like, it may not be,
allow yourself one to two minutes
of really high cadence drills.
I recommend a cadence of 100 to 110.
You could go higher if you felt that way inclined.
This will really, really help to shake off
and loosen those tired legs.
- Then it just goes to spinning home gently,
and following those post-ride routines
that Chris outlined earlier in the series
with a particular focus on fueling,
on stretching, and then of course, on resting.
- Yeah, I like a bit of rest though.
- And we're gonna film that bit now.
- Yeah, shall we, quick sleep somewhere?
("Parallax" by Luwaks)
- [Simon] Start the day as any other.
That has worked well so far, so don't change your routine
on the most important day of the entire schedule.
Just like your pre-event session,
it's important to include a very thorough,
progressive warm-up of around 20 minutes.
Work up to an intense speed close to what you can maintain
for an hour, and the spin gently
for five to 10 minutes.
If you're at an event,
make your way to the line, and enjoy it.
You have worked hard to be there.
- If you're about to go out and test yourself,
make sure you follow the same protocol
as you did on the previous test.
Whilst wind direction can make a difference to your time,
be sure to compare your notes from the previous test.
Make sure record how you feel, what the weather was,
and any other factors that you feel
could have changed your performance.
Well alright then, let's go.
("Marches" by Tigerblood Jewel)
If you have a power meter,
or a smart trainer, it is obviously gonna take
a lot of guesswork out of your fitness testing.
Either way, you're gonna have really good, hard data
to compare to for week one,
right through to the end of the program.
Now Si, this is clearly quite a generic program
that we've outlined here,
but with a few subtle tweaks, it could be tailored
and individualized to quite a broad spectrum of cyclists.
- Yeah, because it does,
and I'm gonna say this without trying
to give you a big head, Chris,
it contains really, really important and useful information
that anyone can use to help them improve.
And I think you also demonstrated just how much
you can improve in a short space of time.
- Yes, if you have a particularly busy life schedule,
then why not reduce the overall volume,
but by maintaining the same amount of intensity
within your rides, you'll also see the same
performance gains you were looking for.
- [Simon] Yeah, that's right because at the end of the day,
as with any training plan, consistency is absolutely
key to seeing those benefits.
- It is.
And goal setting, by setting goals that are specific,
measurable, attainable, relevant, and time bound
you are more likely to stay on track
and focused on the end goal.
- Yeah, right then.
The question is next, where do you go after this?
You've worked hard and you've got your fitness gains.
What do you do with them now?
My suggestion would be that you keep focused
and keep improving.
- Why not set yourself a goal, like a big sportive
at the end of summer?
- Yeah, or indeed,
you can get obsessed about that particular
climb, and just keep beating your time
again and again and again.
I particularly like doing that.
- Yeah, how about
you go out with your mates,
and you take that new fitness that
you've spent weeks building,
and you really hand it out to them?
- The world is your oyster.
Right then, make sure you give this video
a big thumbs up.
And if you've not caught any of the other episodes
in this series, then why not start with episode one?
You can get through to that just down there.